Digital paranoia?

[Draconess25]

I'm not sure of this is anxiety-related, but I figured I'd play it safe and put it in the off-topic section.

So last night, I was reading about how:

1: Google tracks people, logs their history, and shares their information.
2: ISPs keep records of internet use.
3: Information in emails are easily intercepted and recorded.

Don't get me wrong, none of this was news to me. But it got me thinking. Too much. I downloaded Firefox and installed the security add-ons, set Startpage as my search engine, and started looking for a new free, secure, private email provider (which seems impossible, especially since most providers eventually terminate accounts if you don't log in occassionally, and my internet access has been sporadic my whole life).

But then I got thinking even more. Even if information is encrypted, it can be unencrypted (uncrypted? decrypted? discrypted?). Even if an email provider says they don't share information, they could simply be lying. The NSA lied about collecting information in the first place.

Besides, Google is just everywhere! You need Google to log into Youtube or comment on some websites, and despite the privacy/security issues, Gmail is my only email account that never got deleted for inactivity. And I don't even bank, shop, or pay bills online, so my financial information being compromised isn't a concern.

It's just too difficult to hide, so should I be one of the billions of people who don't try at all?

 

[theslowesthand]

Nobody can hide completely, as long as they use the internet. But you can improve your level of privacy up to say ~90-95% :thinking:

1: I use the "Disconnect", "Google Disconnect" & "Facebook Disconnect" addons to block all the requests from those sites (for info about pages you visit)
2: You can use an IP-hiding tool (but i'm unsure if ISP would still knows its you)
3: For any "sensitive" emails, its good to use an email provider which uses SSL, but more importantly to encrypt those emails yourself

Just keep plugging-away at your privacy, read up on it, find new security tools/adds, etc ... eventually you should have pretty robust privacy...

 

[Draconess25]

Nobody can hide completely, as long as they use the internet. But you can improve your level of privacy up to say ~90-95% :thinking:

1: I use the "Disconnect", "Google Disconnect" & "Facebook Disconnect" addons to block all the requests from those sites (for info about pages you visit)
2: You can use an IP-hiding tool (but i'm unsure if ISP would still knows its you)
3: For any "sensitive" emails, its good to use an email provider which uses SSL, but more importantly to encrypt those emails yourself

Just keep plugging-away at your privacy, read up on it, find new security tools/adds, etc ... eventually you should have pretty robust privacy...

1: Where can I get those add-ons?
2: What's an IP-hiding tool?
3: I thought about encryption, but the most sensitive emails I send are just to move pictures between my phone and computer. I have a flip phone, and I dunno if it could open encrypted emails, or if I could send encrypted texts to my Gmail account. And even if they're encrypted, could Google still snoop in my email?

I got a Riseup account, but like everything else besides Gmail, they delete inactive accounts after awhile. It'd be too much of a hassle to change my email address for every site I go on just to have that email address be deleted when I can't log on for 3 years. It happened with Yahoo, Mail.com, and Inbox.

So I switched back to Chrome around the time I posted this thread. I've already used Google so much that there really isn't anything new they can learn about me. I've looked up so much yaoi, researched so many other weird things that I wish I never saw, and texted naked pictures of my boyfriend to my email so I could save them to my laptop. I think I've already exposed myself too much to try hiding now. xD

 

[dottie]

Christopher Soghoian: Government surveillance